High Throughput Flow: A High Content Platform For Phenotypic Screening? Dr John Comley Flow cytometry has many of the technology attributes (eg multi-parameter analysis of cell suspensions) needed when attempting to profile a phenotypic drug response. However, for flow cytometry to be considered the phenotypic drug screening platform of choice… Read More
Precise genome editing: the key to a CRISPR drug discovery pipeline? By Dr. J. D. Wrigley, Dr M Maresca, Dr K Birmingham, Dr M Bohlooly-Y and Dr L M. Mayr From the pioneering days of Watson and Crick in 1953, to completion of the human genome project in 2003, advances… Read More
Misconduct in the biomedical sciences part 1: issues and causes By Dr Gerald H. Lushington and Rathnam Chaguturu Science pursues truth. Real advances in biomedical sciences improve our quality of life and save lives, but the path to these advances is cluttered with the distraction of irreproducible results - an… Read More
Therapeutic Drug Repurposing, Repositioning and Rescue Part II: Business Review By Dr Stephen Naylor, David M. Kauppi and Judge M. Schonfeld There is an emerging consensus that the impact of Drug Repurposing, Repositioning and Rescue (DRPx) on the pharmaceutical industry is real and sustainable. The activity and productivity of DRPx… Read More
By Dr Andy Tsun, Jia Li, Joanne Sun, Dr Michael Yu, Dr Yajie Li and Xiaolin Liu In the past decade, China's drug market has been expanding in double-digit percentages. This has brought about a huge increase in local drug makers and has lured multinational pharmaceutical companies to develop, manufacture… Read More
Immunotherapy: The coming of age of cancer immunotherapy as a treatment paradigm By Dr Jean Pierre Wery As the oncology drug development landscape has evolved, so too have the processes, methods and equipment used in the fight against cancer. Traditional treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy are still very… Read More
TMFs become key differentiator for CROs as stakeholders demand better collaboration and access By Rik Van Mol R&D outsourcing continues to rise sharply to meet the demands of life sciences organisations’ growing pipelines, but CROs have to keep evolving or more nimble competitors will take their place. Regulatory pressures are… Read More
Restucturing Proteomics: The rise of next-generation affinity reagents By Dr Paul Ko Ferrigno & Dr Jane McLeod The ability of antibodies to bind their target proteins with some degree of specificity has elevated them to being among the most useful tools in biology and medicine, with a market value of… Read More
Cell Death: Discriminating between apoptosis, necrosis & autophagy By Dr John Abrams, Dr William G. Telford & Louise Rollins Cell death is crucial for the proper execution of normal and pathophysiological processes and is ubiquitous in biological systems. Programmed forms of cell death are responsible for producing morphological patterns during… Read More
Immunoassay Automation: Hands-free platforms set to change the workflow in research labs By Dr John Comley The automation of immunoassays is not a new trend, but one that has already witnessed decades of innovation in diagnostic laboratories. However, in terms of hands-free automated processing of small batches of immunoassays in… Read More
Redesigning Therapeutic Drug Monitoring for the 21st Century By Lewis Couchman Therapeutic drug monitoring services are a vital part of the pathology laboratory’s remit, providing essential clinical information to guide the management and treatment of a wide range of patients, from those with psychiatric disorders to post-transplantation care. King’s College… Read More
Data-mining Open Source Databases for Drug Repositioning Using Graph-Based Technique By Dr Ken McGarry & Ukeme Daniel The analysis of ‘Big Data’ has great potential in drug discovery; however complications arise in integrating this data in a principled and coherent way. An important statistical tool to manage complexity is that… Read More
Therapeutic Drug Repurposing, Repositioning and Rescue Part I: Overview By Dr Stephen Naylor & Judge M. Schonfeld The pharmaceutical industry is still beleaguered by escalating costs, stagnant productivity and protracted timelines as it struggles to bring therapeutic drugs to market. This situation has been compounded by a ravenous generic drug… Read More
Opportunities For Phenotypic Screening In Drug Discovery By David C. Swinney Renewed awareness of the value of phenotypic screening to drug discovery creates many new opportunities to increase drug discovery success and productivity. These opportunities include identification of translational phenotypic biomarkers, development of new assays that translate to human disease… Read More
Automated Patch Clamping Finally Achieves High Throughput By Dr John Comley Two new third-generation automated patch clamp (APC) systems capable of high throughput processing (10,000 data points per eight-hour day) and full robotic integration have been recently launched. The resulting wider choice of primarily 384 APC systems has the potential… Read More
Industrial-Scale Screening Accelerates Discovery of Novel Drug Combination Therapies By Dr Oliver Leven and Dr Eric Tang Drug combination therapies are widely recognised as essential therapeutic treatments for chronic conditions ranging from infectious diseases to cancer and HIV/AIDS. Such therapies can enhance a clinical efficacy profile, improve the therapeutic window… Read More
